Sapientis
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| Founded | 2002 (15 years ago) |
|---|---|
| Founder |
Kristin Ehrgood Vadim Nikitine |
| Type | 501(c)(3) public charity |
| Focus | improving public education in Puerto Rico |
| Location | |
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Area served
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Puerto Rico |
| Method | adaptive leadership model |
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Key people
|
Kristin Ehrgood, President José Armando Martínez, Executive Director |
| Subsidiaries | Coalition for Equity and Educational Quality |
| Endowment | $783,660 USD |
| Slogan | Sapientis envisions a world where poverty and inequity are solved by guaranteeing every child a high quality education. |
| Website | www.sapientis.org |
Sapientis is a non-profit organization based in San Juan, Puerto Rico whose mission is to improve the quality of public education as a means to reducing poverty, stimulating economic growth and enhancing the standard of living in Puerto Rico.
With over 500,000 children and over 1,500 schools, Puerto Rico’s public education system is the third largest in the United States. It also ranks at the very bottom on all indicators of academic achievement in comparison to other states and U.S. territories. Over half of its schools are not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. The 2008 island-wide standardized academic performance tests show that 45% of students are not proficient in Spanish, 40% are not proficient in English and 45% are not proficient in math. 91% of fourth grade students in Puerto Rico scored below grade level in math in comparison to their peers according to the 2004 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Sapientis’ purpose is to mobilize an island-wide network of diverse and informed change agents who exercise leadership to improve the quality of public schools for all Puerto Rican children.
Sapientis believes that to successfully improve schools, all sectors of society must connect and engage, and not rest until every child in Puerto Rico has access to a quality public education system that develops students’ abilities, nurtures their talents and prepares them to compete internationally. The organization also believes that when concerned citizens come together with specific ideas about improving schools, positive change can become a reality. An analogous movement is the Civil Rights Movement in the American South in the 1960s. Pressure for change and acts of leadership came from all sectors: formal authority (President Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress, the Courts), the media, from persons of authority within the black community (Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.), the general white and black populations, governors who forced schools to integrate and more.
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